The ideas of celestial bliss and fiery damnation are powerful ones

Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. By Bart Ehrman.Simon & Schuster; 352 pages; $28. Oneworld; £20. 

WHERE WOULD Christianity be without heaven and hell? Where, for that matter, would art and culture be, without Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” or Verdi’s “Dies Irae”? For centuries the moral suasion of death, judgment, heaven and hell has underpinned much of Western civilisation. And hard as modern theologians may argue that heaven and hell are just states of mind, experienced here on Earth as much as anywhere else, even now furious devils and shining angels lurk stubbornly in people’s brains. Some 72% of Americans believe in an actual heaven, and 58% in an actual hell.

Hell has always had the more exciting press: fornicators hung by their hair or their genitals, simoniacs buried in sink-holes upside down, despairing gluttons shrieking for a single drop of water, continuous rains of hot coals. Heaven, by contrast, can seem dull and over-decorated with beryl and crystal, with round after round of feasting broken only by sessions of praise. But Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is not concerned with how these imagined places developed their visitor offerings over time. In this unexpectedly...